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Bad Black TV: Don’t Be Embarrassed

Ebony‘s Mychal Denzel Smith says Basketball Wives and other outrageous television shows are pretty low on the list of things that cause him concern about the African-American community.

There have been calls for boycotts, for the show to be pulled, open letters written prophesying the demise of Black womanhood; some have referred to the show as ’embarrassing.’

This is where I have a problem.

I’ve watched Tyler Perry dress in drag and mangle the English language as a supposed “ode” to the Black women he loves. I read the news when Flavor Flav opened up a fried chicken restaurant. Via YouTube, I witnessed a young brother lick the bottom of a newly purchased Air Jordan in front of his local TV news cameras. I watched the BET Awards back when everyone hated them. Through all of that, and more, one thing I refuse to be is embarrassed over my people.

A lot of the embarrassment seems to be rooted in the false belief in a politics of respectability, in which we’re afraid of the white gaze and how we’ll be viewed by society-at-large. We’ve convinced ourselves that presenting an image of respectable Negroes will eliminate stereotypes and discrimination. I regret to inform everyone that it doesn’t work that way. Racism is a system invested in perpetuating itself. It doesn’t disappear when confronted by truth, it simply concocts a new lie. No matter how many Cosbys we get on primetime television, so long as someone benefits from racism, we can’t respectable our way out of oppression.